German Salad Seasoning (Zwiebel-Krauter) and Cooking White Rice

Tonight’s blog is mostly just for my benefit.  I want to remind myself which Knorr Salat Kronung I used, and what I thought about it.  While I was in Germany, I seriously bought no less than 50 little packages of salad seasonings, about 7 packages of each flavor the store offered (I also bought 100 euros of other groceries to fill the empty luggage that I had brought for that very purpose, but that’s another blog!).  And with this pregnancy, as with my others, I’ve had a HUGE aversion to anything vegetable-y, and I LOVE vegetables, so tonight I decided I’d use one of my salad packages to make myself eat something healthy.  Wow!  I LOVED this particular one and oh how I wish these were sold in the states!!  I used the Zwiebel-Krauter package that looks like this:

 

It was really, really good!  It was light, oniony, garlicky, and herby.  I cut up two vine-ripened tomatoes, thinly sliced white onion and quartered peeled cucumber, added the seasoning packet with a little less than a 1/4 cup water and equal parts olive oil.  Then I sprinkled some fresh cracked pepper on it, mixed  and mmmm mmmm mmmmm! 

OK so that was for my benefit, now I’ll add a little something extra for anyone reading  :)  We ate our salad with Tilapia, black beans and white rice, all of which are common in this half Venezuelan household.  I tell people that we eat rice at least three times a week, and almost every time their response is, “I don’t know how to make rice.”  So here we go.  White rice, Venezuelan mother-in-law style:

 

The thing to remember about cooking rice is it’s always a double water to rice ratio.  So if you want to cook 2 cups of dry rice, you’ll use 4 cups of water.  2 cups of dry rice will feed about 4 people.

The first thing I do is heat up a small sauce pan to medium-high heat with the kind you’d use to cook a box of macaroni or a couple cans of soup.  While it’s heating, get out your ingredients:  White rice, Minced garlic, chopped white or yellow onion (maybe about half a medium sized onion per 1 1/2 cups rice or so, this step is really to your taste), and salt.

Put a small amount of vegetable oil in the pan, and then add 1 1/2 cups of dry white rice and the onion.  Mix it until the rice is coated in the oil and the rice starts to brown just a tiny bit.  Then add slightly more than 3 cups of water (I say slightly more, since we added onion). 

Add about a small spoonful of salt and bring it to a boil.  Once it’s boiling, cover it and turn the heat down to low (this step is much easier with a gas stove).

 Cook until you no longer see liquid bubbling out.  If you accidentally cook it too fast, you will cook all the liquid out, and your rice won’t steam.  No worries!  Just add a little bit more very hot water and cover immediately and continue cooking.  If you end up with soft rice but still too much water, take the lid off and turn the heat up and the water will cook out in no time!

 It took me a few times of practice, but rice is super cheap, so you can practice away!!  I sometimes add green onion and shredded carrots, and this is way good too.  Other times I’ll use a different liquid, like green tomatillo or poblano sauce.  You really can play with it all you want after you get the hang of it  :)